Page 16 of The Curious Story of the Missing Lady
“Are you hurt?”
She answered him with silence.
He bent down to touch her arm, and she recoiled, using her heels to inch herself away from him. He withdrew his hand.
“You don’t move like you’re hurt,” he said.
He turned away when she refused to answer once more. When he got to the door, he paused.
“Are you hungry?”
There was only the sound of her own laboured breathing.
Garret stood for a moment, then opened the door and left. She heard the deadlock slide into place and could not control the tears that dreadful noise inspired.
The darkness was cold. She could only give herself to it. And so, she lay down and hugged her body tightly, prayed softly for a moment, and then began to sing.
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The forest came alive with the rising of the sun, which speared its rays through her tiny window as if in answer to a prayer.
She breathed in the morning air, sweet as it was with the coming of spring.
“You’re up early, aren’t you?”
She nearly swooned with the shock. Turning towards the voice, she beheld a tall, gaunt woman dressed in a black, high-waisted cotton dress.
“Stop your whimpering. There’s no need for it.”
Lady Madeline tried her best to still her breathing, which came in an audible whistle from her chest.
She watched as the woman fumbled through her pockets as though searching for something. She had an oval face and flat, sunken cheeks that had never known the presence of a smile. Her nose was long and turned up slightly as if trying to distance itself from her. Her complexion, though ashen, was free of blemish. Her dark hair – hair the colour of polished onyx – was held up tightly with a clip studded with black gemstones. Her face united in a scowl, punctuated by dark eyes so close together as to suggest they yearned to be one.
She found what she’d been searching for – ink, quill, and paper.
“You’re to write on this. Your name and the date of your birth. Next, you’re to write down a Bible verse. Any will do.”
Her hand shot out, the paper extended to her.
She took it. The woman did likewise with ink and quill.
Madeline took them and leaned on the floor to write. She paused to look up at the woman.
“Go on, then. I haven’t got all day.”
She wrote her name, her date of birth, and the phrase, “Jesus wept.”
The woman snatched up the paper, scowled at it, then handed it back.
“Is this some sort of joke?”
“’Tis a proper Bible verse.”
The woman shut her eyes tightly. “I meant somethinglonger.”
She opened them again, and Madeline took quill to paper once more.
“For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.”
